Reply Comments in Emergency Alert Video Description Rulemaking Show Industry, Consumer Rift
Reply comments to the FCC’s proposed rules for making on-screen emergency alerts more accessible to people with trouble seeing and hearing show a wide rift between disability advocates and industry groups and companies over how such rules should apply to IP-based video and devices that can display such video. AT&T, Verizon and CTIA each largely supported comments made earlier in the docket by the CEA, Entertainment Software Association (ESA) and Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA) urging the commission to limit its new accessibility requirements to devices and services of broadcasters and multichannel video programming distributors (MVPDs). But Telecommunications for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, Inc. (TDI), along with seven other groups that work on behalf of the deaf and blind, argued the rules should apply to all video distributors.
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The Communications and Video Accessibility Act (CVAA) requires the commission to make sure emergency information carried by all types of video programmers and distributors are accessible, said TDI and the other groups (http://xrl.us/bn9xna). They urged the commission to clarify that the rules apply to all those considered video programming providers (VPPs) and video programming distributors (VPDs) under Section 79.1 of the FCC’s rules. “This clarification is essential because the definitions of VPDs and VPPs under Rule 79.1” include more than those contemplated in the FCC’s notice of proposed rulemaking, they said.
Moreover, the FCC Media Bureau, in the context of Sky Angel’s program access complaint, has raised the possibility that MVPDs may include IP-based entities, it said.
But requiring IP video distributors to follow video description rules for emergency alerts would be a mistake, AT&T said (http://xrl.us/bn9xnr). “They do not apply to over-the-top IP-delivered video,” it said. “Congress used definitions from these television-based video description rules to explain the emergency information requirements ... because it intended for the emergency information requirements to likewise apply only to television broadcast stations and MVPD services,” it said.
CTIA said it agreed with CEA, and TIA that mobile devices shouldn’t be included in the requirements. “While many mobile devices can be used for the display of video content and have an installed video player, the vast majority of them are not designed to offer linear broadcast channels/MVPD service, are not marketed as having that ability and are not used for that purpose,” it said (http://xrl.us/bn9xoy). “It would be arbitrary and capricious of the Commission to require all mobile devices capable of video playback to develop the means of passing through a secondary audio channel,” it said.
Verizon took a similar position. “The rules adopted in this proceeding should not apply to apparatus such as tablets or other Internet-connected devices ... unless such device also includes a receiver that can be used to access broadcast or traditional multichannel video programming distributor services,” it said (http://xrl.us/bn9xp5). NAB concurred. “Had Congress intended to reach emergency information on IP-delivered programs, it would have done so explicitly, as it did in the context of closed captioning,” the NAB said (http://xrl.us/bn9xqf).